Is it God's baby, or Your baby?

(This was a prompt that I made for a Bioethics class I am in)

John Calvin, a 16th century Christian philosopher and believer in predestination, once said “whoever, then, heaps odium (support) upon the doctrine of predestination openly reproaches God.” Though his thoughts about predestination in the Christian context are less prominent in a modern, more rational society, his general philosophy, especially involving predestination in a genetic context, cause debate to rage on in a world where the modifying human genome seems like the next step in controlling evolution.

How much freewill should human beings, in the context of genetic engineering, have to alter their children? Should we, as John Calvin discussed in his own time, practice the habit of restraint when it comes to issues involving tampering with, as many Christians believe, the structure of humanity that only the creator can mess with, self? Should we, as rational human beings, be willing to move beyond such “iron age thinking,” and move into the world of genetics, unconcerned with the fact we are playing God or nature? Should we, as supposed moderate thinkers, embrace a mix of both ideas?

Essentially, there are two major questions that come out of this: Should we be able to genetically engineer our children, and how does freewill play into how we do it?

Apr 30 2011:
Mostly, I agree. From our antropocentric point of view the perspective of modifiying our gene pool at will looks awesome.
But just like nuclear technologies, it's use must be regulated in order the avoid abuses. The main danger was expressed in the Tedtalk: everybody would chose theyr children to be tall, with green eyes, strong, with a high IQ...eventually resulting in an homgeneity of the human race (everyone beeing "perfect") and the consecuent distruction of the differences that enrichen us (or, even worse, the differences being the consecuence of problems in the process, human mistake would be a determinant factor in our neo-evolution).
Then, there's also the malthusian problem: stronger bodys --> even longer lives --> space and food consume goes up. There's also the danger of its fall into a competitive tool for enterprises and eventually the monopolization of this technology (like it happened with genetically modified seeds).

These are just some of the questions raised by this new technology. It seems to me like they need to be answered, that a context needs to be found for the use of this technology, just like it happened with nuclear power and so many other technologys: Even this conversation is a syntome that a consensus needs to be reached in this matter: there's a need for the bioethical debate.

My answers: only use it to avoid mortal diseases in early stages of the phoetus, when its clear that the child will develop them.

Apr 30 2011:
Yeah, just look at how well 6.8 billion people are doing at being stewards to their one and only planet. Give maybe 9 billion people the power to modify their kids' DNA? What could go wrong??

Apr 30 2011:
For me the big question is whether we have the right to genetically engineer our children given that we did not receive consent from the children to do so. We might not have full understanding of the consequences so do we have the right to make certain choices on behalf of an unborn child?

The solution might be the fact that once children grow up they will be able to use future bio engineering techniques to change their bodies to their liking.